What I learned from a film critic about good and bad writing.

A number of years ago, I created some TV spots for a major metro newspaper. The idea was to showcase some of the paper’s better-known writers and offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their world. Instead of scripting the ads ahead of time, I would stand behind the cameraman and interview each journalist. Then we would cut the footage together and, effectively, write the TV commercials after they had already been shot. Since I like to know what makes other writers tick, the project was a blast. But the most interesting moment of all came with a comment from the paper’s film critic.

I had asked her about the hardest part of her job.

To get the conversation going, I had asked her what she loved about her job and what were the tough parts. She said something that has stuck with me ever since. She said the hard part about being a movie critic is knowing that it can take someone just as much effort to create a bad film as it does to create a good one. The movie may have been a dud, but a lot of people worked incredibly hard to produce it.

The same is true for business writing.

You can put tremendous effort into writing your next presentation, proposal, report, or other document. But effort alone is no guarantee of success. We’ve all read documents that were painstakingly created, but still missed the main point. Sure, they may have been grammatically and factually correct, but they were also unbearably confusing…or boring…or both.

So if time and energy don’t ensure better writing, what does?

Business writing is a craft. It’s not complicated, but there are best practices you need to follow. We talk about these all the time at 3000messages. Stick to them, and you’ll see better results. To improve your writing, remember these three things:

• Pay attention to good writing whenever you come across it – if you read something that works well, pause for a minute and ask yourself what makes it work. What is it about the structure or style that makes it a good read? Not only will you pick up some great tips and ideas, but you’ll also get in the habit of noticing what works and what doesn’t.
• Learn or review a writing tip each week – the easiest way to become a better writer is to learn a little each week. (That’s why we created this blog. If you haven’t already signed up for email notifications of our new posts, click here.)
• Practice little and often – when you learn a new writing tip, try using it in the very next document you write. It’s the doing that makes the learning stick.

Write smarter, not harder.

If you follow these principles, will all your documents be perfect? Of course not. No one bats 1000. But once you know what to look for, you can make your communications much, much stronger without having to put in a lot more effort. After all, it can take just as much work to create a bad document as a good one.